Smittens

Chris has these terrible gloves that I think he got at Walmart a few years ago. They’ve started to develop some holes and he continued to wear them. I was convinced people in town would see the holes and whisper to each other “but doesn’t his wife knit. She must just not care if he gets frostbitten fingers.”

So, while he was working nights I started making him a new pair for Christmas with scrap yarn.

Snazzy pillow from Erin

I got half way through the second mitten and ran out of yarn. I wasn’t that crazy with them to begin with so I thought I’d stick it in Chris’s stocking with an IOU for a full pair, either a continuation of the 3/4 done set or a completely different pair. He surprised me by deciding he wanted mittens. I’ve never seen him wear mittens before and I can probably count on one hand all the mitten patterns for men I’ve seen published. I scoured my vintage pamphlets and books and still came up empty. So, I designed him his very own pair.

This is what I get when I give him a license to model

Chris picked out the yarn at Ram Wool. It’s Patons Wool Classic in colour 225 and I used almost the entire ball because of his long hands.

T-rex pose

This is a pretty standard Celtic braid on a seed stitch background. I did not centre it so well, which seems to be my speciality.

The mittens look great. The colour is very manly. Now he can give people the finger without people knowing. It will just look like he’s waving hello. Awesome. Is that his threadless t-shirt peaking through? I’d love to see a full shot of it.

Jesse would never ask for mittens. I can’t even get him to wear gloves! I guess if we lived in the deep freeze rather than the banana belt, he might change his mind. I’m impressed with the mittens, though — are you going to publish the pattern?

I stopped by your blog today after seeing your comment on Ysolda’s blog. I too have a pair of mittens in a similar pattern to the hat that she posted today. They were made by a friends grandmother over 10 years ago and are starting to show there age. A few months back another friend was making a pair at our lys snb. Long story short, if you are on ravelry and search for “newfoundland mitts” in the pattern section you’ll find it, and best of all it’s free. I was so happy when I found the pattern, but have yet to get around to making a pair.